Wednesday, 14 October 2015

Carmarthenshire Council has excelled itself this morning with the appearance of a new corporate video of our wonderful local authority. Caebrwyn stumbled upon the creation whilst trying to locate the link to the webcast page and found this instead. Residents now have to rummage through the website to find the webcast link, we hope this is only temporary as surely corporate spin is no replacement for transparency and openness, not even in Carmarthenshire...

There was me thinking the authority was riddled with unlawful decisions, creative accounting, idiotic councillors, an arrogant chief executive, a wholesale sell-off of services, secretive deals and an unhealthy toxic culture, but I was clearly wrong. The video clearly proves that Carmarthenshire council is as wholesome as apple pie after all...

In what must have been an oversight in the final edit, Caebrwyn puts in a momentary, distant and blurred appearance waiting to ask her question at September's council meeting. You will recall that the question, ironically, concerned the payment of a quarter of a million quid to bail out a favoured private company, the role of the chief executive in this dodgy deal and whether, or not, it was in the best interests of the people of Carmarthenshire.

The answer, of course, was as far removed from reality as this latest offering from our very well resourced Department of Spin.

Its there, tucked in the bottom of the left column, almost blanked out, its so dark. Hardly shouting from the front page really.

But what does it say?? Well, after waiting over minute for the message and some words, not a lot.

All in all a load of stats; they speak Welsh and English. Or in mark james case, English only. There are 185000 residents. 1 million library books borrowed - interesting as that accounts for just over 2 for each of the population...

Not really selling the council at all, although it doesn't need to be sold as its a requirement. So, why the video? After all, where is the competition? Or maybe they had some spare cash just burning a hole.

Glad to see my council tax being so well spent.

Can I get the pot holes in my road filled in now please? Or perhaps wheelie bins? Street lights that work?

Anon 15:44 and 22:40 To be honest the purpose of this video is not entirely clear, you could be right and it's showing how jewels such as Parc Howard could be transformed into another steel clad wonder to add to the collection...

'The Claimant is a housewife, mother and amateur blogger. The defendants are a council and a chief executive. It is literally state versus citizen. In a large part, the origins of the entire case derive from the issue of getting ones voice heard at all'

'In light of the evidence, the allegations of perverting the course of justice are unsustainable. This is the most serious allegation and the Claimant deserves to have her reputation vindicated...Mr Davies' evidence was incoherent, confused and contradicted [his] statements given at the time...in short, Mr Davies' evidence of what happened has completely changed and he cannot be relied on'

(From closing submission for the claimant at trial, February 2013)

...In August 2016, following a very belated (three years later) complaint to the police by Mark James that I perverted the course of justice, the investigation was dropped as there was no evidence.

There never was going to be any evidence as I told the truth, on oath, at the time.